Spare my brother's life, a schizophrenic man on death row

Scott Panetti is a paranoid schizophrenic who wore a TV-western cowboy costume in court and was allowed to represent himself while on trial for his life. But I know him as my big brother, the strong and handsome sailor, who came home to visit when on leave from the Navy.

Scott is scheduled to be executed in Texas on December 3, 2014 – unless the courts intervene or Governor Perry grants him a 30-day reprieve. Scott was convicted of murdering his in-laws, but he is not a cold-hearted killer. He is a very sick person who has suffered from severe mental illness for more than 30 years.

My brother suffers from the incurable and devastating mental illness schizophrenia. In the decade leading up to the offense for which he was convicted and sentenced to death, my brother was hospitalized more than a dozen times due to psychotic behavior.

In 1986, Scott first succumbed to the delusion that he was engaged in spiritual warfare with Satan. He became obsessed with the idea that the devil was in the house. He engaged in a series of bizarre behavior to exorcize his home, including burying furniture in the backyard because he thought the devil was in it.

The trial court should never have allowed Scott to represent himself. He was clearly extremely ill: he attempted to subpoena over two hundred witnesses, including the Pope, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. He frightened the jurors by assuming his alternate personality of “Sarge,” gesturing as though pointing a rifle into the jury box, and imitating the sound of shots being fired. He passed up a plea deal that would have saved his life. The court could have insisted that an attorney represented my brother, but it did not, and the outcome was his death sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution forbids the execution of severely mentally ill individuals who do not understand the reason for their punishment. Scott is not mentally competent: he would go to the execution chamber believing his fixed delusion that he is being put to death for preaching the Gospels, not for the murder of his wife’s parents.

It’s not right for our country to use capital punishment on a severely mentally ill person like my brother Scott. You can find out more about the case here: texasdefender.org/scott-panetti

Having a brother on death row is like having a terminally ill family member. But there’s one big difference: we can’t stop a terminal illness, but we CAN do everything in our power to stop Texas from taking my brother’s life.

Please join me in asking Governor Rick Perry to grant a 30-day stay of execution so the courts can look into my brother’s competency to be executed, which has not been assessed in nearly seven years.